When we all became terrorists

We went to a wonderful opening at the Provincetown Museum last night. We saw impressive art. One image, however, infected my soul like being penetrated with a long punji stick smeared with human excrement.  It was an image entitled Anti-Vietnam war by Miriam Laufer cc 1969. Resonating in my psyche, I associated this image with a quote by James Hillman.

Below is a little poem I wrote about my reaction followed by Miriam Laufer’s image, followed by the James Hillman quote:

We all became terrorists

When the REAL became only

shopping and material things

When imagination became disdained

as delusional wish fulfillment

When art became marginalized as airy fairy

and religion became slogans on billboards

When success became measured

by who has the largest gun

That’s the day we all became terrorists

rushing forth to kill gooks and ragheads

in “uncivilized” foreign lands… wherever

Mixed Media piece by Miriam Laufer, protest against Vietnam war

 James Hillman quote from A Blue Fire, p. 187:

"A terrorist is the product of our education that says that fantasy is not real, that says aesthetics is just for artists, that says soul is only for priests, imagination is trivial or dangerous and for crazies, and that reality, what we must adapt to, is the external world, a world that is dead. A terrorist is a result of this whole long process of wiping out the psyche.”